Okay. I Give Up. I’m Finally Interested in Agents Again.

Last night’s episode was a blast. For the first time since the first episode, I found myself actually interested in what was going to happen. And, spoiler-free, here’s what I thought.

I can trace it to two things. First, and most obviously, the writing has improved. The show looks like it’s finally getting away from Marvel Studios patting it on the head and saying “good job, now run and play and let the adults do adult stuff.”

The second is that I have to admit that Skye is finally a real person.

Granted, all the characters have gotten significant advancement this season, but it’s been a lot of work to overcome the flat personalities we started with. Skye has been the biggest issue. I’ve talked about it before (here, here, and here), but the summary is that she spent the whole first season looking like a fake tan with a half-assed actor attached. She always had perfect hair and makeup, even though she supposedly was living in a van for two years and then on a plane for a whole season. Even when she was shot up and confined to bedrest, she was looking only slightly mussed.

“I must look horrible! I haven’t been to the beauty salon in hours! And I need to touch up my store-bought tan!”

Harsh? Okay, a bit. After all, with the horrid writing she was given, Lawrence Olivier would have had trouble acting his own way out of a paper bag. She still could have done a lot to firm up her character (her body language put her at “walking scenery” level as a default) but there wasn’t a lot to work with in the first place. She’s also proven she’s up to the task if she’s given the material.

One thing I noticed at the beginning of the second season, though, was that she finally stopped looking like she never misses a daily appointment at the spa and tanning booth. Here’s a comparison: two near-identical photos, taken about a full season apart:

Ironically, Skye looks and acts more human now that she’s, you know, Inhuman.

And, to give credit where credit is due, I think this is mostly because of Cloe Bennet herself. She’s been different ever since the start of the season, despite the continued bad writing treating her like a token member of the team — the tech geek semi-focus character who may or may not be intended as sex appeal (at least until Mockingbird showed up) that occasionally, you know, did stuff. Despite that handicap, Bennet has been doing a fantastic job at overcoming whatever was keeping her from looking and acting like not only someone in a grueling job, but also like a full SHIELD agent.

Last night’s episode, however, cemented this proof. Suddenly, Skye gets to be more than walking scenery. She gets to be more than just a MacGuffin that might or might not be plot-significant. She’s finally treated as a real person who matters as more than just a reason for action to happen. She finally gets to make decisions.

Character growth is all about pivotal decisions. It’s what happens as a result of making hard choices. And in “Who You Really Are,” she shows just that. She shows who she is. At a moment when literally everyone in the entire episode is making choices for her, she stands up and makes her own.

And that is why I’m finally interested in Agents of SHIELD again, as more than just a bystander watching geek shows or a blogger looking for topics. (And admittedly, Agents has given me a lot of topics.) For the first time, I like Skye. And now that Marvel is caring about the show, it looks to be a good ride.

Yes. I’m really liking how Fitz is no longer straight out of the central casting box marked “Generic Geek, Scottish”; and even Simmons has gained depth beyond “SHIELD Agent Hermione Granger.” However, I decided to focus on just Skye because that’s been the biggest change.

I could actually write a separate blog post on the plot of the episode and comparisons to “The Well,” and not just because of Sif, but the biggest problem Agents has suffered has been the fact that there’s been no real reason to care about the characters. Now that they seem to matter to Marvel, the writers are able to fix that.

Don’t remind me of “The Well”…along with “Yes men” it was my least favourite episode of last season.
How do you figure that Marvel cares about the show now more than they used to be? If they announced Inhumans as movie and laid the groundwork for it in the first season of Shield, this seems to be a long time plan, meaning Marvel cared from the get go.

Actually, the interview said that Marvel gave the writers confirmation early on concerning the Daisy Johnson and that they worked into this direction early on. They might have greenlighted the Inhuman connection later, perhaps because they wanted to figure out the movie slate first and if they wanted to do a movie with them, but the basic idea was there from the get go. And it actually was one of the reasons why the show suffered so much in the first season, because they focussed so much on Skye that other characters were often showed aside. It felt like the writers were supposed to do an ensemble show with Coulson as the centre, but they actually wanted one about Skye and it showed. One of the reasons why the second season is better is because it spreads the attention more. Especially Fitz and Simmons finally have an arc instead of just being around like they used to be.

I never bought into the excuse the Marvel tied their hands. There might be some restrictions, but the main problem was that the writers didn’t allow any conflicts between the characters. They had one “team building” episode and after that the audience was supposed to believe that this is a tight knit team. And sometimes it was even the staging…for example the scene in which Skye is standing in front of the wall of dead Shield Agents after learning that Shield protected her her whole life. It could have been such a great moment. But no, they had to add Coulson waxing about how special Skye is because she took the news so well. Why not showing the audience how she reacted and then allowing it to draw their own conclusions instead of trying to force a certain opinion on them?

Of course they tied the show’s hands. That doesn’t mean the writers are off the hook, but we know that Marvel was dictating script direction in the first season. I don’t see why that would have stopped in the second, considering that the writing suddenly got better only after the Inhumans angle got green-lit.

I am not sure, since the writing and directing staff hasn’t really changed all that much, and Joss Whedon is still busy with “Age of Ultron”. Perhaps they had a meeting in which they laid out the plan for the second season. I mean, some of the writing problems are still there (like the believe that the audience would care particularly about Trip dying, even though he was barely present in the episodes beforehand), it is more like something was infused which gave everything a boost.

Novel Ninja (n):

1) A person who uses subtlety and a vast array of skills to bring out the best in a story, preferably when the audience least expects it. E.g.: an editor.
2) A blog run by freelance editor Matthew Bowman, focused on advice for writers and reviews for readers.

Shadow the Ninja

Enter your email address to get notified when there's a new post. It's like email ninjitsu.